Back At It: The Gym

I finally did it.
I went back to the gym for the first time in a long, long while tonight.

Originally, I’d planned to go walking/running in the park by our house, but by the time I got home and changed clothes, it was already dark.  Not really wanting to exercise in the dark, my husband offered to take me to the gym since he was going there anyway, so I decided to go. 

I really wanted to walk in the park because I hate, hate, HATE the treadmill.  Walking and not getting anywhere?  NO FUN.  I prefer being able to go somewhere while I walk, and I hadn’t moved nearly as much at work today as I would have liked to–I spent a lot of my day at my desk grading papers (the bane of my existence as an educator) and not so much time walking around.  I even took the stairs a couple of times today just to get some more movement in.  And I NEVER take the stairs at work.  But I digress.

So when we got to the gym, I decided to ride the recumbent bike for a little while.  I didn’t do too badly for not having ridden it in over a year.  I rode for a total of 20 minutes, and rode a little over 3 miles.

Not too bad for having been gone from the bike for so long.

After I got off the bike, I decided to do a little walking on the treadmill.  I walked for 15 minutes at a pretty good clip–nearly the same pace I kept when I moseyed a couple of weeks ago.  I also did my walk on an incline so that I’d work a little harder.  Got my heart rate up and kept it up, so I was pleased with that.

When we left, I felt pretty good about the workout I’d put in.  We came home, had dinner together and I told my husband I was frustrated because I want to be able to exercise like that more often, but my schedule is so cram packed full of stuff during the week that there is no way I can fit it in during the work week.  I refuse to get up at the asscrack of dawn to work out–I am NOT a morning person, and I know that I will find reasons not to get up early to exercise.  I’m much more likely to do my workouts in the evenings.  The problem with my current schedule is that I have commitments Tuesday-Thursday evenings:  therapy Tuesdays, Rotary Wednesdays, and support group Thursdays.  Each of these things takes around 2 hours on each of these evenings.  And then I come home and work some more.  There is no time.

So I think it’s going to have to be alternating cardio and strength training workouts Friday-Monday with three rest days in between, doing as much movement (walking) as I can during those three days.  It’s not an ideal situation but it is going to have to work for me for now.

How do you get in your exercise when you are busy?  I am trying so hard to make myself a priority and I feel like I’m failing at it by not exercising as much as I could be.  I am scared to fail at this, even though I have had success so far.  I fear that the weight loss is going to halt at a weight I’m not comfortable with or that I don’t want to be at, so I feel like adding in intentional exercise will help me avoid that.  I also feel like I’m juggling so many new behaviors at once and my learning curve is steep.  I don’t want to fail.

I didn’t get a chance to post my food from yesterday, so I’m posting it under today’s food choices.  I was a protein monster today:  97 grams.  I also ate carb-heavy today (47 grams) because I knew I was going to exercise today, regardless of how it took place.  I also remembered how sick I felt after the 1-miler because I’d not eaten any carbs for fuel and wanted to avoid that feeling again.  I was successful in that!

Today’s food choices, from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, iron supplement; Sargento reduced fat cheese stick; Applegate farms maple honey turkey slices; Rudy’s smoked ham with Tillamook cheddar cheese; Texas style chili with cheddar cheese and a small piece of leftover cornbread; barbecue chicken drumsticks. Not shown: Boar’s Head Canadian bacon, Goldfish Whole Grain crackers.

Sunday’s food choices are below.  Protein intake yesterday was 83 grams.

Sunday’s food choices, from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, B12 and iron supplements; Rudy’s smoked ham and turkey; Trader Joe’s turkey meatballs; Sargento reduced fat cheese stick; homemade Texas chili with cheddar cheese; Trader Joe’s chocolate caramel wedges (2).